Jax awoke the next morning to the cold breeze of the AC. He opened his eyes and saw that the woman on top of him had somehow managed to get the remote and drop the temperature. He chuckled as he gently slid Alianna off him and onto the bed, receiving a complaining sigh in response. He pressed a kiss to her spine before standing up and looking around the room for his briefs at least. Sometime later he stepped out of the bathroom, donned in joggers and a tee, drying his hair with his towel when he stopped at the sight before him.

Alianna lay on her stomach with her face buried in his pillow. She had thrown back the duvet so that the cold breeze caressed her skin. He had opened the blinds partially so that the sun filtered in, creating a mesmerising pattern on her bare back. The slow rise and fall of her chest told him she was still asleep, not surprising considering their activities in the secret of the night. The scrapes on his back twinged at the memory and his blood burned with anticipation but he exhaled softly to calm himself, Alianna had more than exceeded his and her expectations last night, it was best not to overwhelm her.

And with that, he headed into the kitchen, striking up a conversation with Genevra as he went through his emails. When he heard four pairs of dress shoes against the marble floors, he looked up.

"Did you get it?" he asked Rex.

"Whatever it is," Naveen said as Rex placed a wooden keepsake box in front of Jax, "we got it."

"Where did you find that?" Alianna's voice commanded the attention of everyone in the room. Her eyes never left the box as she walked closer. Jax saw the looks of surprise and Evan suppressed glee as the royal blue sundress she was wearing did nothing to hide the love marks on her skin. He also noticed that her hair was up in a bun showing that she had no intention of hiding it anyways.

"It was in Joel's drawer at the old warehouse as he said," Naveen answered. "You've seen this before?"

Alianna's voice was small, "He always kept it near him, I was never allowed to touch it." Everyone shifted uncomfortably at the revelation as Jax pulled her into his lap.

"By right, you should be the one to open it," he murmured. "Would you like to go to my study?"

"No, I am fine," Alianna answered. She swallowed and cleared her throat before opening the box which was fastened just with a delicate look.

Inside was a leather bound book with gilded edges and a gold clasp nestled in velvet lining. Alianna's heart was pounding in anticipation as she took it out. She undid the clasp and opened the thick cover. Her heart stuttered as she saw what was written on the first page in a strange but familiar handwriting.

She ran her fingers over the letters, she could see L'iiblis writing in the corner of the room from her childhood bedroom. She could hear the pen scratching against the page with the force with which he wrote. She licked her lips and turned the page and her chest hurt, like if someone was twisting her insides. Jax tightened his grip around her and gently pried the book from her hand and placed it on the table.

The book was a photo album. The first picture was one of a young baby, barely a couple months old and severely malnourished swaddled in a white blanket, tucked into a baby cot. Judging from the shape of her elegant nose, it was baby Alianna in the picture with a date at the bottom:

Jax could only assume that this was day L'iiblis took her from her actual birth parents. He reached out and turned the page and instantly regretted it as Alianna tensed to the edge of panic.

The next picture was again baby Alianna but this time she was hooked up to multiple needles and tubes. Judging from how malnourished she still looked, L'iiblis had brought her to a hospital to save her but what was interesting was the note written on the bottom of the page;

Alianna sighed, "When he went to the hospital, Marino would know immediately. I guess from then on out; I was his." Her voice was small, tired almost, lost in a dream. Everyone jumped as Jax slammed the album shut. It was wrong to delve into a past that Alianna barely remembered in front of everyone. He looked up, pleased to see everyone looking at him.

"I understand we have someone special arriving this evening," he said. Alianna paid no attention to him as she picked up the album and silently re-opened the album. "Everyone knows their duties, agreed?"

"Yes," came the unison reply. Jax continued talking as Alianna dwelled on each picture.

At some point during the day Alianna had curled up in the hammock in the gazebo. With each page her life slowly came together. L'iiblis was in charge of recruiting members for her family, during one of his missions to a rural village in Italy he had noticed her parents, trying to survive but they were failing to provide their newborn daughter, her, with everything she needed. He had taken her from them, there was no indication if he had killed them or if her birth parents had willingly given her up, and had attempted to nurse her back to health but ultimately had to take her into a hospital, rousing Marino's interest.

L'iiblis and Marino had had a turbulent relationship as far as she remembered, L'iiblis was the brawn and Marino was the brains and with that they ran the family well-oiled machine but there was a side to L'iiblis that Marino never thought existed. A caring, paternal side that emerged looking at her much younger self in the hospital. L'iiblis knew Marino would claim Alianna as his.

But Marino was particularly sadistic. He let L'iiblis keep Alianna, teaching her how to walk according to a lowlight photograph of a small toddler holding the hand of the photographer with both of hers smiling brightly as the yellow dress she wore, reading to her as she saw in a picture of toddler in bed in the foreground and a hulking silhouette in the background, showed her the world as told by the picture of herself walking along the beach, seashell in hand. Her heart ached, that was one of her earliest memories, so faint she had always that it was a dream but it was not. Her eyes burned with imminent tears, L'iiblis had given her everything a father could have been.

Marino had ripped that life away from her. Tossing her into the barracks at his wretched school, that was one of her most vivid earliest memories. She was forced to become a killer, the once promising beginning she had in life was beaten down, quite literally. She was just another child in the crowd, her image of L'iiblis replaced from one of a parent to a persona of pure fear; the Hound.

There was a break in the photographs of her, presumably Marino had L'iiblis on missions that kept him from far from the school but he had managed to capture some of her achievements. Her first win in the fighting tournaments when she around eight years old, he first time she held a gun; the first time she wielded a knife. In that particularly picture she looked feral, a natural born killer, a girl who had known no love, just pain. Her eyes were empty as her body betrayed all her pain and rage quite a contrast from the cheery infant from the earlier pages. She could tell it was at this moment he had decided to make the knife for her, the entire was documented in these pages as well.

A strangled noise choked her throat as she turned the page. A girl of no more than thirteen stood behind a corpse of a man slumped in a chair, the knife that had been left on her bed next to her head on the morning of the mission, dripping with the same blood streaming from his neck. L'iiblis had even been there on her first assignment; like a parent watching his child ride a bicycle for the first time, to make sure everything went well.

The pounding increased in her head but when she turned to the last page, she broke.

It was one of her, dazzling in the gold dress she had worn to Jax's New Year celebration, she could only see Jax's hands on her waist as he held her and she was smiling up at him. He had been there, at her last mission. How had he evaded Jax's security, she had no clue but then again, at the time, Marino was the enemy; Marino was the only villain in her story. What had really torn her apart was the caption under this particular photograph.

She stared at the words, burning them into her memory. She had not realised she was crying until a thumb swept slowly under her eye. She looked up at Jax wordlessly showing him the picture after he sat down.

"What are you thinking?" he asked quietly. He partially regretted listening to Joel and sending Rex for the damned album and he should have looked at it before giving it to her. He had just gotten his rose back, he did not want to lose her again. However, the rational part of him knew that Alianna needed this closure. If he had kept this from her, there would always be a part of her that was missing, a path to her previous life and this was last loose end she needed to tie up.

"All my life, I thought of Marino was the closest I would ever get to a father figure," Alianna said quietly. "I was so wrong. Marino ensured that I had no recollection of one. To Marino, I was leverage, a hostage. Some of the punishments I endured were not meant to discipline me but to punish him." She remember the times she was dragged out of bed in the dead of the night to the cells where she whipped and beaten. She vaguely remembered seeing a form lurking in the shadows through the pain.

When Alianna became quiet, Jax took the album from her and closed it. He had left her alone with it for too long for his liking, it was late in the afternoon and she had not eaten nor drank anything for the day. He offered her the cup of tea, her current favourite Darjeeling with a touch of honey and milk, which she took from him, her fingers instinctively curling around the warmth as Genevra predicted. He looked at her sternly, a silent order to drink.

"So what now?" he asked quietly after she had sipped half of the cup.

Alianna looked out onto the horizon. "All I can think about is "What if?" What if I had just given in? What if I had just gone with him? What if he never really meant to kill me? What if our lives could've gone back to the way it was. No mafia, no blood, no killing."

Jax knelt in front of her, his hands covering hers around the cup. "There will always be those second guesses Alianna. And as much as it hurts, we don't get the chance to choose differently. All we can do is focus on what we have; right here, right now."

Alianna looked at him and as always, Jax spoke the truth. She could not dwell on what her life could have been had she gone with L'iiblis. Right now she was gazing into the eyes of a man who loved her, she had a loving and welcoming home. She had a family, a sane, noble one. She may have lost a huge part of her but she gained future.

Jax sighed as Alianna kissed his forehead, conveying her gratefulness as he stood. He gestured to the album, "What would you like to do with this?"

"Keep it," Alianna answered quickly out of fear that Jax would burn it. She swallowed, "As much it hurts to look at it, as much as it sickens me, this is the only document that tells me who I am. I don't feel lost anymore, I know who I am and I wish I could thank him for this."

Jax smiled and nodded, taking the album in his hand and taking her hand in the other. "I will put this together with your knife?" Alianna nodded. Jax smiled as they walked back to the house, "There's someone who wants to meet you," Alianna's immediately froze, "but I think you're not in the right frame of mind to talk to him," he concluded.

"Your special guest?" Alianna had not been paying attention but she had heard that much.

"Yes," Jax rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb, "it's not that I'm doubting your strength Alianna, but this meeting will not be easy."

"Who is it?" Alianna raised an eyebrow, "This special guest of yours."

"My father."